[1] In 1841 he published the first global geologic time scale based on the correlation of fossils in rock strata, thereby helping to standardize terminology including the term Mesozoic, which he invented.

His father belonged to an old Welsh family, but settled in England as an officer of excise and married the sister of William Smith, a renowned English geologist.

During the next few years, he attended various schools and helped his uncle with his geological research and writing; he also developed an interest in lithography (printing from prepared slabs of stone) and was among the earliest English practitioners of the process, experimenting with it between about 1816 and 1819.

Phillips accepted engagements in the principal Yorkshire towns to arrange their museums and give courses of lectures on the collections contained therein.

From that centre, Phillips extended his operations to towns beyond the county, and by 1831 he included University College London within the sphere of his activity.

In 1840, he resigned his charge of the Yorkshire Museum and was appointed to the staff of the geological survey of Great Britain managed by Henry De la Beche.

Phillips spent some time studying the Palaeozoic fossils of Devon, Cornwall and West Somerset, of which he published a descriptive memoir (in 1841).

[4] Nine years later, on the death of Hugh Edwin Strickland, who had acted as substitute for Dean Buckland in the readership of geology in the University of Oxford, Phillips succeeded to the post of deputy.